Rechavia Berman – GangstaYid

Archive for July 2011

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution

Posted by: on: July 31, 2011

Welcome one and all, to an unusually optimistic edition of the your weekend holyland update. Get your camping gear out, ’cause we’re taking to the streets to fight for our rights.

Doncha know, talkin’ bout a revolution? Sounds like a whisper… Actually, it’s quite louder than that. At least 150 thousand people took to the streets from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Beer-Sheba in the south, crying out that “The People Demand Social Justice”, and calling on PM Binyamin Netanyahu to resign. Over 100 thousand demonstrated in Tel Aviv, dwarfing the already huge demonstration from last week. And to conclusively put the lie to the claim by Bibi apologists, that this was merely a leftist provocation by a few stoned and unemployed spoiled brats from Tel Aviv, this time they were joined by another 50 thousand people all around the country, with Haifa, Jerusalem and Beer-Sheba adding over 10,000 protesters each.

This was the culmination of a week in which the housing and cost of living protests defied predictions and gathered steam. Earlier in the week Ofer Eini, head of the powerful umbrella labor union the Histadrut, decided that he had spent enough time with a wet finger in the air, and jumped on the bandwagon, threatening that if by the end of the Sabbath (last night) the government would not open negotiations with him regarding the demands of the protesters, he would…do stuff.

Problem is that although Eini was greeted warmly by the naïve kids running the Tel Aviv encampment, truth is he’s not at all on their side. He’s a creature of the powerful unions, the ones where a winch operator at the Ashdod harbor makes $15,000 a month (yes, that’s US dollars. 51,000 shekels), and some of his colleagues make even more. He doesn’t represent those who have trouble making ends meet. All he wants is a photo-op, followed by a quick sellout, just like he did to the strike of the social workers a couple of months back. This, after all, is the man who opposed the strike at Haifa Chemicals, where already low wages have been stagnant for years, and where tenured workers have been steadily replaced by temps with no rights. So he won’t help any.

Eini isn’t the only bandwagon jumper. MIA opposition leader Tzipi Livni was finally sighted saying something about the protests late this week and calling on Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin to postpone the parliament’s summer break so that a solution to the crisis can be found. Even Judy Mozes, whose husband is the Deputy Prime Minister and whose own family owns the country’s largest media conglomerate, is fronting like a woman of the people and tweeting that “so great to see the power with the people.” At said conglomerate, in which she owns an 8% stake, workers have no right to unionize and not much rights at all, for that matter.

Meanwhile, and regardless of Eini’s posing, Netanyahu is seriously stressing (check this out). He’s secretly talking about replacing his sock puppet of a treasury minister, Yuval Steinitz, with someone of a more “social” bend. So far there seem to be takers for the job, whose description is apparently “wanted: second sacrificial lamb. Ingratitude guaranteed.” The leading candidate, Moshe Cachlon, pointedly rejected the talk of him taking over the treasury job, but did say that Bibi must heed the calls of the people.

Likud members, fearing that this uprising will cost them at the ballot, are sweating as well. MK Miri Regev, who got one of the first headlines of this protest by clashing with the tent-dwellers, calling them “daft” and getting doused with a glass of water for her trouble, is now demanding that the party convention be called into session, to discuss the means of heading off this electoral menace. Meanwhile, even the insufficient suggestions on how to deliver relief to the masses are being blocked by ministers such as Uzi Landau, holder of the Infrastructure portfolio, who is from the racist Israel Beiteinu party and figures the uprising won’t sway any of his party’s voters.

And just this morning, the director-general of the Ministry of Finance, Haim Shani, resigned, due to unspecified “differences of opinion” with his minister – meaning with Netanyahu, whose haphazard knee-jerk reactions to the crisis managed to get on Mr. Shani’s professional nerves.

But Bibi still has one supporter he can count on – dubious gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his free rag “Israel HaYom.” The Bibiton, as it is nicknamed in Israel, correctly realized that ignoring or downplaying last night’s show of strength was not an option, so instead they went for plan B: First, they cut the number of protesters by a full third, copping to only 100 thousand protesters country-wide. Second, they ominously intoned: “The protest is social but most of the signs are political”. I’m sorry, who do YOU go to when demanding redress, if not the political establishment? However, this is still more subtle than what most in the pro-protest camp jokingly envisioned, which was the Bibiton’s leading on the front page with the whacking of a notorious organized crime boss late last night.

Far away from the tent encampments, in the occupied territories, the Israeli Occupation Force finds itself at liberty to step up the oppression of the natives. Arrests were carried out deep in Area A, a well providing water to a Palestinian business was slated to be destroyed in the Jordan Valley, and demonstrations against the larcenous separation wall are being suppressed with even greater brutality than usual, as evidenced by the picture of this Palestinian press photographer, beaten over the head with a club for violating the “closed military zone” (which accredited journalists – he is one – are exempt from), and for “unfairly depicting the security forces.”

Ah, the unfairness of reality – a reality which says that until the elephant in the room is addressed and the connection is made between the immense resources being poured down the occupation drain, replete with subsidies for housing, education and public transport, and the lack of resources for the welfare of people who choose not to subsist on the pauper’s lamb, no real progress will be achieved.

And on that grim reality note, we shall wrap it up. The Weekly Holyland Update is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

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My book, “Jewcy Story”, a popular history of the 2nd Temple Era, can be bought for Amazon Kindle, for cell phone or for PC here.

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Marching for Home

Posted by: on: July 25, 2011

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another excursion to the mad Middle East, where nothing – not even wide-spread housing protests – stands in the way of the continued theft of other people’s land. In this week’s installation we take you camping, have a little water fight with the powers that be, and do the creeping annexation jig. So put on your dancing shoes, here we go:

 

Last night Tel Aviv saw one of its largest protests in years. At least 30,000 people (I was there, I say around 50K) marched from the edge of Rothschild Boulevard to the Tel Aviv Museum Plaza to protest the insane housing prices. After the protest march, a few rowdy anarchist types stuck around and blocked one of the major intersections along the march route, resulting in a few dozen arrested, and most released this morning. The protesters played it smart and left a tent full of candy and chocolate outside Tel Aviv PD HQ, with signs “sorry for last night” and “We’ll continue to fight for you too”.

 

The interesting thing to watch was the newspaper coverage. Yediot and Haaretz were both pro-protesters, Maariv was more or less balanced, and Israel HaYom, the free newspaper founded by gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson for the explicit purpose of promoting and defending PM Bibi Netanyahu, is simply trying, for nigh on two weeks now, to pretend that the protest isn’t happening, or isn’t as big a deal as it is. The paper devoted 5 full pages to the massacre in Norway, and less than a page to the uprising of the serfs here at home.

 

Bibi himself, regressing into his Munchausen’s disease, claimed this morning to have “foreseen the housing crisis years in advance”, and blamed it on the fact that the state controls 90% of the land and poses procedural impediments to construction of new housing. Of course, he promised a reform in Israel’s Land Authority, then let it melt away. Part of it was supposed to be included in a new Planning Committees Law, the final vote on which was just postponed today. So that’s how hard ole Bibi is pushing for this reform, the need for which he foresaw.

 

The tent encampment protest has spread in the past week from Tel Aviv all over the country. Even my sleepy semi-rural hometown of Pardes Hannah has one. The question is whether the energy will be sustained and channeled productively, or will it dissipate. The energy last night at the march (which I attended) was weird – but not necessarily in a bad way. Some have defined it as “not angry, just resolute”. We shall see.

 

In a related incident, protesters stormed the meeting of the Knesset’s Finance Committee (held at Kfar HaMacabbiah in Ramat Gan, rather than in Jerusalem) and threw water at the participants, in protest of the fact that the housing crisis was not on the committee’s agenda. Shoulda used something stronger than water, says I, but nobody ever listens to me. Armenia 1999, anyone? (Kidding. Violence, particularly indiscriminate violence, is very rarely the answer, if ever. However, the thought is savagely satisfying).

 

Another protest gaining steam is that of the MD interns, who are subject to insane hours and extremely pathetic pay (their base pay is around $1,500 a month). Their attempt to have themselves admitted as patients so as to get around a court order forbidding them from walking off the job was foiled, but they are still striking (the entire MD community has been on a court-modified strike for weeks now). After a couple of days of dithering, the housing protesters got wise and embraced the young docs.

 

Turning to the place where all the money lacking for affordable housing and decent wages for MD’s is poured down the drain, Israel’s stupid government is now renouncing the policy of ambiguity which has thus far sustained its occupation. The government passed a resolution tying government support for museums in “Judea and Samaria” with that of museums in Israel proper. Give this government enough time and they’ll give us all a one-state solution…

 

Meanwhile the Israel Occupation Force has been pursuing a policy of land theft using an Ottoman law, saying that any private land that isn’t being cultivated can be seized by the state – but they’re doing it only for the benefit of settlements for the master race. Apparently they are heeding the call of far-right MK Aryeh Eldad to “end the Muslim occupation of the Land of Israel”.

 

Approaching landing, this is how the IOF recruits deal with non-violent protests. It’s not really the fault of the recruits, but that of the state that brainwashes them and throws them into impossible situations.

 

Finally, the departing head of the Personnel Department of the IOF, General Avi Zamir, sounded the alarm at his farewell ceremony about the religious radicalization of the armed forces. Of course it is too late for that, as reports from “Operation Cast Lead”, in which soldiers were given sermons by rabbis exhorting them to “holy war” before battle, amply prove.

 

That’ll do it for this week. The Weekend Holyland Update is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

 

My book, “Jewcy Story”, a popular history of the 2nd Temple Era, can be bought for Amazon Kindle, for cell phone or for PC here.

 

 

 

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Cottage Cheese Strikes Back!

Posted by: on: July 17, 2011

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the first flight of Rick-ochet Airlines, bringing you the Weekend Holyland Update, that tour of the macabre which has been taking you on relatively safe trips to the edge of the abyss in the Land of the Prophets since 2008, now in syndication with 972Mag!

 

Today on our tour we shall have craven abdication, stark racism, a severe case of Islamophobia, working people refusing to take shit, an environmental disaster, an act of thuggishness, a sweet stroke of irony, and a dirty old man who just does not know when to stop, among other things. Confused? You won’t be by the time we get done. Please fasten your seatbelts and make sure you’re not turning Muslim on the way to passport control – That’s liable to scare folks round these parts…

 

We shall begin with something fresh from last night. Some people got fed up and put up a tent encampment in the middle of fashionable Tel Aviv, to protest the skyrocketing price of housing (folks are paying over $1,500 a month for crappy 2 bedroom apartments, and doing it on household incomes of maybe double that, often less). As one protester said on the news, “Used to be they’d sell us the lie of working hard to eventually buy our own apartment. OK, we’ve given up on that one, but let us rent at a bearable price.” So these folks in the tents made a little trip up Rothschild Boulevard to King George St., and threw cups of cottage cheese at the “Ze’ev Citadel” – the famous HQ of our ruling party, Likud. This of course is only funny if you’ve heard about the fabled Cottage Cheese Protests which took place last month.

 

The tent protesters are facing a problem anyone who ever tried to be active on anything in Israel knows only too well: Whether to tie this with opposition to occupation, as part of a coherent holistic world view, or make the occupation a sort of taboo in the organization, so as not to alienate the ones who may be nationalist but are willing to protest with you.

 

The inevitable lies are bound to come here. Soon, they’ll say the left has radical hijacked this protest. The truth is that the lefties  are an integral part of each and every protest against exploitation, poverty and social issues – even though the people for whom they protest are often deeply traditional, right-tending folks who are astounded to find the “treacherous hippies” from scorned Tel Aviv coming to fight alongside them. So when you’ll hear about those people “that ruined the protest by politicizing it,” know the score.

 

On to the top story of the week – The Boycott Law: This law that just passed here makes it a “civil injury” as the bill terms it, to “call for the economic, cultural or academic boycott of a person or other entity, solely due to its association with the State of Israel, any of its institutions or a territory under its control, in a way that is capable of hurting them economically, culturally or academically.”

 

The law goes on to specify that Judea and Samaria (i.e. the occupied West Bank) qualifies for the purposes of the law, and that anyone who calls for a boycott and is considered likely to be heeded by anyone, commits a “civil injury” for which anyone purporting to be hurt by the call to boycott can sue. The brave legislators then go on to instruct the judiciary to award “damages” to plaintiffs without the need to prove any, uhhm, actual damages.

 

Then the law goes on to say that anyone doing such a nasty, nasty thing will also not be allowed to contend for any government bids, contracts or grants. The thing to watch in this law is its overt cowardice. It’s as if the government is saying: “We really want to persecute those who dare boycott the settlements, but we know that even the most craven legal counsel won’t sign off on the government doing it – so we’ll make it a matter of financial ruin and let the settlers themselves do the grunt work for us!”

 

Even as it is, and after the original bill was amended to drop the $8,500 award provided for in the first draft, the entire top brass of the Ministry of Justice is distancing themselves from this thing.  The government’s legal counsel has grumbled that he will deign to defend this law in court when the time comes, but made it clear that he expects to lose: “The law has significant constitutional flaws”, he says.

 

This is of course slightly ironic since Israel has no constitution. What Adv. Yahuda Weinstein is referring to is Israel’s “Base Laws”, which serve as the weak stump foundations of a constitution – which we don’t have because the religious would never stand for the codification of personal and religious freedoms that would naturally feature in such a document. These “Base Laws” (freedom of speech isn’t one of them, by the by, but that’s partially rolled into “Base Law: Human Dignity and Liberty”) are so solid, all it takes is 61/120 Knesset members to amend or completely overturn it. But the government doesn’t want to be that obvious about its enmity to basic civil liberties that interfere with the occupation, so it doesn’t do it that way. Yet.

 

The all-but-assured court overturn is of course the real point of this entire exercise. The hardcore right wing in Israel constantly panders to the most basic emotions of its flock, promising things they know aren’t possible. They especially delight in “passing” laws that are bound to be struck down by the court, only to turn around and say “See? The unelected tyranny of the judiciary is thwarting the Will of the People!”

 

Tellingly, neither Bibinocchio nor his henchman, Defense-Minister (and currently devoid of an electoral base) Ehud Barak were present for the vote, and other notable failures to vote on this minor little issue of free speech include Labor Chief contender Yitzhak “Boojie” Herzog, some still-sane Likud absences (including Speaker Reuven Rivlin, who pointedly announced “present but not voting”) and all of Barak’s “Independence” silly phantom party, who sent the creepy Einat Wilf to explain their principled stand, which boiled down to “we’re hoping to weasel into Likud’s next list of candidates for Knesset. Obviously we can’t buck coalition discipline.”

 

Saw an item on the news past week about the segregation of Black Ethiopian Jews in the school system, and what chilled me was that there was at least one case where a school administrator went from the plain racism of not making an effort to help Ethiopian students meet the requirements, to the malicious go-out-of-your-way racism of actively failing dark-skinned students who were somehow ruining her pristine color scheme by passing their classes. “We were asked to lower [Ethiopians’] scores in English and literature,” one teacher admitted. If you understand Hebrew, you can watch the story here.

 

Israel was visited by a catastrophic natural disaster this week, dear readers. I refer not to the oil tanker that dumped crude on the coral reefs in Eilat, nor to the pipeline that burst and devastated flora, fauna and precious open water in the Zin Stream (Wadi al-Faqra to some of you) preserve in the Negev. I am talking about the extended exposure to one of the most toxic sources of blegh known to science – Yes, Glenn Beck was here. He has yet to make good on his threat to give a full blown revival show in which he will reveal himself to be Nehemaiah Scudder, but he spoke at the Knesset’s “Immigration Absorption and Diaspora Relations” committee. The neanderthal right have a big majority in this committee, and the whole thing was truly stomach-turning. His pants must still be wet from all the obeisance. The only non-right wing member of the committee, Labor’s Daniel Ben-Simon, chickened out and didn’t spoil the welcome wagon. I will admit, though, that it was amusing to see the trogs scream, in essence: “See? We got friends in the world too! POWERFUL ones!!” – While as an example displaying a man even Fox no longer wants to have anything to do with.

 

 

The state has climbed down from a particularly stupid tree it stuck itself on about a year ago. There’s this guy, Harald Fuller-Bennett. American Jew. Been to Israel as part of the “Birthright” tours, visited another time on his own, and was let in with no problem. But on May 2, 2010 he makes the error of reaching Passport Control at Ben Gurion airport with a passport sporting entrance stamps from Syria (gasp!) and Sudan (ewwww). So he’s pulled aside, interrogated, and denied entry. Reason? “suspicion of terror affiliation”. Huh? Source? “Secret information,” of course. “Also, we have knowledge of an anti-Israeli protest activity plaintiff has participated in, and the possibility has been raised that plaintiff intends to convert to Islam.” Oh, the horror.

 

This is what we in Israel call “the Matzliach Method”: Throw anything you can think of at the wall and see what sticks. Last week the state announced before court it does not insist on keeping the menacing Mr. Fuller-Bennett out of the country, admitting the “terror associations” charge proved false, yet insisting there was “fear of Islamization.” State was ordered to pay court expenses, and the plaintiff would like, if it’s not too much of a bother, to note that he is in fact an atheist.

 

Some fishermen from Gaza decided they would actually like to catch some fish, especially those of sufficient number and size to feed their families. Israel denies any vessels leaving the shores of the Gaza Strip the right to exceed 3 miles from shore. There are no fish in commercial quantity that close to shore. Fishermen finally had enough, defied the 3 mile barrier, and were fired upon by the Israeli Coast Guard. I know, Gilad Shalit could be smuggled away forever in a small innocent-looking fishing boat. But like with the blockade at large, inspections can be arranged. These are small vessels. The Gaza fishermen would likely have no personal problem with being checked for 20-30 minutes each way if it means they can actually, pretty please, go to cast nets where they are likely to come back full. I haven’t been able to find out the condition of the fishermen who were shot at.

 

Approaching landing, Karma proved to still have her wicked sense of humor, as she gave racist football (soccer) club Beitar Jerusalem and its “Death-to-Arabs”-chanting crowd the financial savior they had been praying for, to take the team off failed oligarch Arkady Gaidamak’s hands and enable it to purchase some players for the upcoming season. The twist? Meet Adam Levin and Dan Adler, a couple of do-gooder, lily-hearted lefty J-Street-type Jews, who promise not to get too involved in the business side, but do insist they plan to take on the “handful” who besmirch the name of this storied franchise. I wish them all the best, of course, but I hope they know that the “handful” is a good solid half of the fan-base, and by far the most emotionally and financially involved half. I can see a situation where the dyed-in-the-wool Kahanist element “secede” and start their own fan-owned club, after the model of two clubs from the other side of the political map recently (fans of the Hapoel clubs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in basketball and football respectively, restarted there teams under fan ownership and are doing nicely so far). The founder of the revisionist Beitar movement, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, must be rolling in his grave to see who runs his flagship now.

 

Finally, former President and convicted rapist Moshe Katzav is in the news again. After about a month of spreading rumors, the gag order was removed and it was revealed that Katzav’s legal team ordered illegal data acquisitions, phone tapping, witness tampering, like that. The actual crooks who did it are singing and implicating the former president as directly involved in everything. Katzav, dude, give it UP. Seriously.

That’ll do it for this week. Rick-ochet Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

 

Read my book “Jewcy Story” –  a popular history of the 2nd Temple Era, can be bought for Amazon Kindle, for cell phone or for PC here. Get 500 years of Jewish history for only $5!

Flytilla Exposes Israel’s Bumbling Hysteria

Posted by: on: July 9, 2011

Welcome once again to The Weekend Holyland Update. This is WHU flight 080711, taking off to utter hysteria, land theft, necrophilia, idolatry, a rare case of accountability. Please fasten your seatbelts and remember to lie about your destination at passport check, or you’ll be deported.

 

The “Flytilla” has been a resounding success. First, the organizers goaded Israel into new heights (or lows) of hysteria in the week or two preceding the stunt. I’m not talking just about the massive police and secret police mobilization (to a spot that’s already one of the most heavily secured in the country), but also about immensely stupid PR efforts such as this amazing piece of gobshite, in which Israel declares “We are a paranoid, traumatized people who see threats in every rorschach ink blot” – thereby validating one of the central claims of its critics, in a loud and horribly acted manner. (Read all about it here and in the links within that article. It’s hasbara alright, even if at first folks on our side were saying it just has to be satire. Since it isn’t, I’m beginning to think we goddamn lefties have a mole in the hasbara upper echelons causing them to release these things).

Then came the big day itself. Early in the day the headlines on Israeli websites were jubilant: “only two activists landed and were deported. Most Flytilla participants denied boarding at departure points”. The writers of these headlines, of course, gave ZERO thought to the cost of Israel having its European friends suffer the airport mayhem to enforce Israel’s policies.

But then came the afternoon arrivals and showed that like the old Jewish folk tale, Israel ate the stinking fish, took a whipping AND got kicked out of town. It imposed upon its European friends, and STILL had to deal with dozens of activists who arrived anyway.

The dealing was rather inept as usual. Oh sure, most of the terribly dangerous enemies were swiftly identified and detained, pending deportation (some were flown back immediately, others will spend the w/e in jail and be returned to their ports of departure on Sunday) – but that was the point of the exercise. The activists weren’t hoping to get in, they were hoping to be refused entry and thus expose the fact that more often than not, people arriving at Tel Aviv airport declaring that they intend to visit Palestinian cities or villages are turned away unless they can prove they have relatives or business there (and of course, sometimes having relatives is the reason to be turned away too). This is all contrary to international conventions and to the Oslo agreements, which require Israel to allow the PA to enjoy incoming tourism. Israel may deny entry to specific individuals, but not to everyone declaring their intent to visit the occupied territories.

So the genius State of Israel obliged them, arresting for deportation 50 and 60 year-old activists, many of whom it had previously admitted to the country with no problem – but that was when they lied and said they were going to Tel Aviv, rather than Ramallah. But proving the flytilla’s point was not enough for the defenders of the Jewish and Democratic State[TM]. So in addition, Israel’s police, aka the Jack Booted Thuggery, stood by as Israeli citizens in the terminal attacked humanitarian activists, cursing, spitting, and in some cases physically attacking as well. When Jerusalem Post journalist Larry Derfner attempted to defend some activists from such an attack, he himself was detained shortly by Israel “Finest” (they’re not even the country’s finest thugs, since if they were they’d be making more money as actual criminals).

To top it all off, some of the activists did manage to get past the border control and reach their destination in the verbotten West Bank. I have not been able to ascertain whether they truthfully declared their destination, which would indicate a modicum of Israeli brains, or if they lied – thereby conclusively proving the original point.

On a related matter, check out Dimi Reider’s article on the Israeli Airport Authority’s form for travelling Arabs.

Related matter 2: As part of the prep for the flytilla, Israel barred the entry of two Dutch journalists who actually wanted to tell its side of the story, scheduling interviews with anti-flytilla/flotilla subjects, and coverage of Israel bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza. Heckuva job, hasbara!

Update: The foreign airlines on which the activists flew in are now saying they will have a hard time deporting the 124 people Israel wants returned immediately to Europe. “It’s the height of the travel season and all the flights are fully booked,” one senior airline exec said. The amusing silver lining of all this is that there has been a stay in the roundup of “illegal” foreign workers and asylum seekers, since the detention facilities are filled with flytilla people.

Now we have to wait and see what means of letting Israel make a damn fool of itself its opponents will think of next.

 

On to other matters. Last week I forgot to touch upon the case of Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who was allowed into the UK only to be arrested very shortly afterwards on grounds that he was banned from the country. Apparently he managed to sneak in during the very short time-frame between the signing of the ban order and its arrival at passport control in Heathrow. Now Salah is no angel, as he is reportedly not above using classical antisemitic imagery (“We are not the ones who allowed themselves to eat a meal of bread and cheese in children’s blood”, for example…”you are monkeys, the virii of all times” for another). However, it’s kind of funny that GB would find it necessary to arrest him when even Israel allows him to be free. Also funny is the fact that the UK isn’t deporting him, but is insisting on holding him in custody. Without some solid evidence to the contrary, I really can’t blame people who see this as another case of Israel getting others to do its dirty work for it – since Israel would love to lock Salah in jail (and throw away the key) but fears the consequences.

 

In a rare case of accountability, a Border Police officer was convicted of abuse after she threatened a minor, whom she arrested for having three detonators in his pocket (these, while having terrorist associations, can also be used as a sort of fire cracker), with death, shoved one of the detonators in his pocket and pretended to light it, pointed a loaded and cocked gun at him, and showered racist abuse on him. In an even more heartening development, the perpetrator herself fully accepted responsibility for her acts and stated flatly that she acknowledges deserving punishment, while explaining that the pressure of dealing daily with a hostile population (not only arabs but also ultra-orthodox Jews) eventually caused her to snap as she did. This in contrast to incidents such as the two soldiers who used a 9 year-old as a bomb detector during Cast Lead. In that case the two thugs and their families went on the offensive upon conviction, screaming bloody murder and whining that the army was throwing its oh-so brave warriors under the bus. So even if Shani Sevilia is just saying what she said in hope of a lenient sentence, it would be petty and uncharitable to necessarily assume so, given the culture of opposite behavior surrounding her. So Ms. Sevilia, while you did very a bad thing, please accept a measure of respect for your subsequent behavior, and I hope you only have to serve a short amount of time in prison. Then again, since the scumbags who used a kid as a bomb detector and showed zero remorse got three months suspended sentence, it would be cruel irony if she does serve any time.

 

The UN has found that during the Nakba Day events, in which some (stupid) people tried to enter Israel from the Syrian border and were shot, Israel reacted with excessive and unnecessary force. Israel? Unnecessary force? Surely you jest!

 

Remember the rabid rabbi Dov Lior, who wrote a supportive introduction for the nazi-like tract “The King’s Torah”? The one who was summoned to answer to the police on suspicion of incitement, flouted the summons for months, was finally detained for an hour and this caused his supporters to throw a tantrum? Well, a day or two after this incident, he gave a lecture in which he stated that democracy is “the idolatry of our times”. He repeated this twice, lest anyone miss it, and compared himself to biblical Abraham, who according to Jewish legend was thrown into a furnace for breaking the idols in his father’s idol shop. To most of you this might sound as just more religious fulmination, but if you’re a religious Jew, you know that Idolatry is one of only three sins (along with incest and bloodshed) which a Jew is commanded to die rather than commit. Furthermore, a Jew is supposed to kill those who try to force it upon him (think about the story of Hannukah). That’s not even a dog-whistle. That’s plain Hebrew.

In a connected event, rabbi Yaacov Yosef, son of Shas leader Ovadiah Yosef, was also detained for questioning in the same case, after also flouting the summons to report voluntarily for months. His supporters also rioted, setting fire to the butt-ugly “string bridge” at the entrance to Jerusalem, which unfortunately did not cause the costly eyesore’s demise. His father reacted by saying that he was “stupid” and that he should have just gone when summoned and prevented the whole affair.

 

Israel, which in the past few years has proved itself terrified of coriander and clowns, among other things, has added necrophobia to the list of things that scare it. Israel was scheduled to return a bunch of corpses of dead terrorists to the PA. When it turned out that the list included some Hamas terrorists as well, families of terror victims got up in arms and forced Minister of the (In)defens(ible) Ehud Barak  to reverse course and cancel the corpse transfer. And the fact that letting the PA take credit for getting Hamas cadavers back would give it a minor win? Doesn’t matter, because although the PA fights Hamas for Israel (yes, even after the “reconciliation”), Israel doesn’t actually want to strengthen it.

 

Finally, just in case you were concerned that Israel As An Occupying Entity was going soft, fear not: Israel’s government has ordered the “civil administration” in the occupied territories to steal some 45 acres of land belonging to the Palestinian village of Qaryot, in order to “legitimize” the illegal (illegal even according to Israel) oupost of HaYovel, which is part of the settlement if Eli (which is only illegal according to everyone in the world but Israel). Now, lest you get any notions about the “settlement blocks” which Israel is supposed to keep under putative future agreements, Eli is nowhere near there. It is closer to the Jordan river than it is to the Green Line. In short, despite any crap you might hear from Bibi about how he’s willing to make painful sacrifices, the truth is that the theft of Palestinian land will never stop as long as he or anyone like him is in power.

 

And on that grand larceny alert, the pilot will now bring her in for landing. WHU Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments* (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

 

* Please do comment. I write for feedback. Thanks!

 

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Lessons Learned And The Coming Theocracy

Posted by: on: July 3, 2011

Hello and welcome to WHU Airlines, flight 070211, taking off to budding theocracy, a lynch averted, racist violence, and sabotage on the high seas indicating a surprising capacity for lesson-learning. Fasten your seatbelts, put on your life preservers and don’t make any wrong turns; the Weekend Holyland Update is now in session:

We’ll start with the hot-button issue most of you are probably following: The new Gaza flotilla has been foiled, for now, by a combination of diplomacy and sabotage. Greece was persuaded (probably through indirect application of monetary pressure given its dire financial straits) to prevent one of the ships from leaving port. Meanwhile, two of the other ships met with mysterious malfunctions, which Israel is smirkingly denying any involvement in while its deputy PM is (in an equally smirking manner) hinting (Hebrew) that it did have a hand in it.

I gotta say that all things considered, Israel has shown quite a capacity for learning from its errors. Had it handled the previous flotilla in the same manner (I mean the sabotage, as the diplomacy was a no go with Turkey at the time. Now the Turks are eager to tone down the hostility, so it did what Israel wanted and declared that the Irish ship, one of those that met with mysterious mechanical malaise, broke down before ever arriving in port), it would have avoided the massive diplomatic nightmare it endured last spring.

So not that I support sabotage, or Israel’s stupid siege on Gaza (which benefits Hamas more than anyone, and Israel understands this full well), but one has to admit that sabotaging ships in port is a significant improvement over shooting people in the back of the head. And since I can see no reason why Israel couldn’t have sabotaged the ships last year as well, I have no choice but to conclude that Israel WANTED the bloodshed last time around, as a sort of stupid, thuggish show of force. Nice to see that they’re capable of getting it through their thick skulls that this might not have been as desirable as it may have seemed at first.

Also important to note that the diplomatic component of this relative success was achieved not by the Foreign Ministry, headed by racist international pariah Yvette Lieberman, but by the PM himself, Bibinocchio, who has been buddying up with embattled Greek PM George Papandreou for a year now, an effort which has now paid off (although reports from Greece indicate that it was the US that ordered them to prevent the Gaza-bound ships from leaving). In other words, the Baron von Bibhausen has totally neutered the country’s diplomatic corps for the sake of his precious coalition.

Now we just have to hope that the people of Gaza, who are getting seriously fed up with the thuggish ineptitude of Hamas, manage to oust the reactionary scum and leave Israel with no reason whatsoever to continue bullying the 1.5 million residents of the world’s largest open air prison. Once Hamas is out of power, even Israel’s bitch, the US of A, will be hard-pressed to justify denying the right of Gazan fishermen to sail to where there’s actually fish in the sea (i.e. beyond a 2 mile strip).

The other big story this week was the detaining for questioning of Dov Lior, one of the leading rabies (not an error) of the jehovah-nazi faction among the settlers. Lior, a civil servant (he is paid by the state both as the rabbi of Qirayt Arba and as the head of an “arrangement yeshiva”, where students study torah and do a shortened military service ) was wanted for interrogation in connection with his endorsment of the nazi-like booklet “The King’s Torah”, for which he wrote an introduction. This lovely text states that not only is it allowed to kill any gentile who is thought to endanger Jews, even those considered “righteous among the nations” for having saved Jews and even babies if one suspects they might grow up to endanger Jews, but that any Jew may carry out these murders, without waiting for state sanction. In other words, what we have here is religious sanction for the killing of non-Jews (up to and including babies) just because some Jew decided they were a threat.

So the judo-nazis who wrote it, as well as those who expressed support for it, were wanted for questioning on suspicion of incitement to violence. But for months, Lior refused to report for questioning, asserting that the Torah trumps the laws of the state.
Eventually the po-lice got tired of being flouted, and not wanting a Waco-like standoff by coming to arrest him in his settler stronghold, they got him in his car leaving Jerusalem. Lior was detained for questioning for all of one hour, which was enough time for his supporters to swarm on the plaza in front of the Supreme Court and throw a little tantrum.

When he was released, the leaders of the jehovah-jugend huffed that he been held in custody, blood would have been shed. The leader of the judo-nazis in Knesset, “National Union” chairman Yaacov Katz, threatened even after his mullah’s release that “we shall settle the score with those responsible for this crime” – the crime of enforcing a legal summons, you see.

Official response was tepid, with both Bibinocchio and his Justice Minister, Yaacov Ne’eman (who was accosted later in the week upon daring to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron for his ministerial responsibility for the arrest) issuing extremely restrained statements about the rule of law. Bibinocchio has, not very long ago, called Lior and his ilk “the elite commando unit leading the nation and paving the way”. (h/t @jinjirrie). Meanwhile, even so-called “moderate” state rabies were aghast at this intolerable enforcement of law on one of their own. When the judo-nazis take over, remember this moment.

Remember how last week we recalled what happened when an Arab took a wrong turn into a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur? Well, this week it happened the other way around, when a Jew took a wrong turn into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, and was set on by a mob. The guy may well have died, if not for the village Mukhtar (leader) who pulled him into his own home, where his three sons stood up to guard the poor guy with their lives if need be. This turned out not to be necessary, as the prestige of the Mukhtar was sufficient to hold the mob off until the police and an ambulance arrived. Lynching and mob violence are despicable no matter who does them, despite the people of Issawiya being targeted for ethnic cleansing along with a number of other East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, where Arabs are being evicted to make way for settlers, tourism parks and whatever isn’t Arab homes. This poor guy has nothing to do with that and didn’t deserve to be beaten for it.

Meanwhile, all over the West Bank, settlers have been stoning Palestinian cars, torching Palestinian fields and orchards, to absolutely no effective response from the powers that be. When a settler woman from the extremist settlement of Yitzhar reported that she had been mugged in the neighboring village of Hawara (which sounds wrong – what was a settler woman doing alone there?), the leadership of Yitzhar called their Hawara counterparts to threaten that unless the alleged unknown perpetrator was handed over, they could not be responsible for the results. We’ll keep you posted on that.

I knew I forgot something or two: The Israeli Knesset has approved for final vote two particularly disgusting laws. The first will criminalize the boycott of the settlements and allow anyone claiming to be hurt by a call for such a boycott to sue the person making the call for about $9,000. Let me be the first to say that I piss on this law and will continue to boycott anything made in a settlement and call on other to do so at the top of my lungs. The settlers can repo my debts.

The second repugnant piece of legislation will require Palestinians whose homes are demolished by the occupation to pay for the demolition themselves. I could point out that this is eerily similar to the nazis requiring the Jews of Germany to pay for Krystalnacht, but then I’d be accused of Godwinizing the discussion, and we can’t have that now, can we.

And another thing I forgot: In Tel Aviv, the porkers (that’s the police for you law-abiding citizens) have begun confiscating bicycles from refugees and foreign laborers who can’t prove they bought them. Of course they wouldn’t dare do this to Jewish Israelis, because it’s not like anyone keeps the receipt for their bike on their person, or in most cases at all…

The BDS campaign is aiming at Israel’s finished diamond industry, the country’s leading export commodity, claiming that it is exploiting a loophole in the Kimberly Process to combat conflict diamonds despite the fact that the diamond industry donates some $1B a year to Israel’s armed forces. Said loophole is that the Kimberly process only refers to raw diamonds and not to cut stones.

Finally, speaking of the diamond industry, In the coastal city of Natanya, once famous for being a diamond industry hub and now famous for all its crime families and underworld shootings and bombings, a Jewish man stabbed a Palestinian whom he thought was looking at his sister. Cause, you know, gotta keep the untermenschen away from our women!

That’ll do it for this week. WHU Airlines is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments* (and donations, if you’ve a mind) where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.

 

* Please do comment. I write for feedback. Thanks!

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